down the middle of it for old folks. That, Bobby said, would be his runway.'Bobby,' I said, 'you got this puppy's wings on backward.''No,' he said. 'This is the way they're supposed to be. I saw something on Wild Kingdom about hawks. They dive down on their preyand then reverse their wings coming up. They're double-jointed, see? You get better lift this way.''Then why isn't the Air Force building them this way?' I asked, blissfully unaware that both the American and the Russian air forceshad plans for such forward-wing fighter planes on their drawing boards.Bobby just shrugged. He didn't know and didn't care.We went over to Carrigan's Hill and he climbed into the rocking-horse saddle and gripped the lever. 'Push me
hard,'
he said. His eyeswere dancing with that crazed light I knew so well - Christ, his eyes used to light up that way in his cradle sometimes. But I swear toGod I never would have pushed him down the cement path as hard as I did if I thought the thing would actually work.But I
didn't
know, and I gave him one hell of a shove. He went freewheeling down the hill, whooping like a cowboy just off atraildrive and headed into town for a few cold beers. An old lady had to jump out of his way, and he just missed an old geezer leaningover a walker. Halfway down he pulled the handle and I watched, wide-eyed and bullshit with fear and amazement, as his splinteryplywood plane separated from the wagon. At first it only hovered inches above it, and for a second it looked like it was going to settleback. Then there was a gust of wind and Bobby's plane took off like someone had it on an invisible cable. The American Flyer wagonran off the concrete path and into some bushes. All of a sudden Bobby was ten feet in the air, then twenty, then fifty. He went glidingover Grant Park on a steepening upward plane, whooping cheerily.I went running after him, screaming for him to come down, visions of his body tumbling off that stupid rocking-horse saddle andimpaling itself on a tree, or one of the park's many statues, standing out with hideous clarity in my head. I did not just imagine mybrother's funeral; I tell you I
attended
it.
'BOBBY!'
I shrieked.
'COME DOWN!'
'WHEEEEEEEe!'
Bobby screamed back, his voice faint but clearly ecstatic. Startled chess-players, Frisbee-throwers, book-readers,lovers, and joggers stopped whatever they were doing to watch.
'BOBBY THERE'S NO SEATBELT ON THAT FUCKING THING!'
I screamed. It was the first time I ever used that particular word, sofar as I can remember.
'Iyyyy'll beeee all riyyyyht . . .' He
was screaming at the top of his lungs, but I was appalled to realize I could barely hear him. I wentrunning down Carrigan's Hill, shrieking all the way. I don't have the slightest memory of just what I was yelling, but the next day Icould not speak above a whisper. I do remember passing a young fellow in a neat three-piece suit standing by the statue of EleanorRoosevelt at the foot of the hill. He looked at me and said conversationally, 'Tell you what, my friend, I'm having one
hell
of an' acidflashback.'I remember that odd misshapen shadow gliding across the green floor of the park, rising and rippling as it crossed park benches, litterbaskets, and the upturned faces of the watching people. I remember chasing it. I remember how my mother's face crumpled and howshe started to cry when I told her that Bobby's plane, which had no business flying in the first place, turned upside down in a suddeneddy of wind and Bobby finished his short but brilliant career splattered all over D Street.The way things turned out, it might have been better for everyone if things had actually turned out that way, but they didn't.Instead, Bobby banked back toward Carrigan's Hill, holding nonchalantly onto the tail of his own plane to keep from falling off thedamned thing, and brought it down toward the little pond at the center of Grant Park. He went air-sliding five feet over it, then four ...and then he was skiing his sneakers along the surface of the water, sending back twin white wakes, scaring the usually complacent(and overfed) ducks up in honking indignant flurries before him, laughing his cheerful laugh. He came down on the far side, exactlybetween two park benches that snapped off the wings of his plane. He flew out of the saddle, thumped his head, and started to bawl.That was life with Bobby.Not everything was that spectacular - in fact, I don't think
anything
was . . . at least until The Calmative. But I told you the storybecause I think, this time at least, the extreme case best illustrates the norm: fife with Bobby was a constant mind-fuck. By the age of nine he was attending quantum physics and advanced algebra classes at Georgetown University. There was the day he blanked out
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